José Navarro, General Director, E.J. Krause Tarsus de México and Chairman of the UFI Latin American Chapter. José Navarro, General Director, E.J. Krause Tarsus de México is also the Chairman of the UFI Latin American Chapter. He along with Paul St. Amour, Vice President of E.J. Krause Tarsus de México are presenting the Viva Mexico! session at the upcoming Latin American Conference September 18-19 in Mexico City, Mexico. I had a chance to catch up with José the other day. Interview by Stephani [...]

Plans for Hitex's new Hall 4 (Hyderabad, India). One of the things I’m most looking forward to learning about at UFI’s debut Latin American event in September, is plans for major venue development in the region. It’s not because I’m a huge fan of buildings you can see from space, it’s because venue development tends to happen only after public sector buy-in – and so it follows that venue development is an indication of a government’s commitment to the virtues of a burgeoning exhibition industr [...]

Marco Basso, President of Brazil Informa Global Exhibitions Division. Marco A. Basso, is President of Brazil, Informa Global Exhibitions Division, a company he’s been with the last 22 years. Discovered by a head hunter to begin Informa’s operations in the country, he knew nothing about the exhibition business, but had a background in congresses and seminars. Like most of us, he said, “The exhibition business is a very dynamic industry and gets into your blood pretty quickly – but you have to h [...]

Ana Maria Arango, UFI Latam Regional Manager talks about the state of the exhibition industry in the Latin American region. Interview by Nick Dugdale-Moore. Ana Maria, 18 - 19 September, UFI will be organising its first LATAM Regional Conference in Mexico. Can you tell us something more about the region and the exhibition industry market share/revenue? Latin America is a very diverse continent, not only in terms of the evolution of the exhibition industry, but in the diversity of their exhibitio [...]

Corrado Peraboni, UFI President 2018. UFI has been present in Latin America for quite some time now – our first member from the region, Corferias, joined us back in 1956 and hosted the Global Congress in Bogota in 1975, and then again in 2014. We now have 42 members in the region from eight different countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador and Mexico. While this covers the mostimportant exhibition markets, there are still several countries missing, and we hope [...]

Corrado Peraboni, UFI President It was wonderful to see so many of you earlier this month in Verona at our annual European Conference, especially as it took place in my home country Italy. Thank you again to my friends and colleagues at Veronafiere for hosting us so graciously, and to all our speakers for sharing your insights! During one of the breaks, I took a moment to watch the UFI team’s video showcasing some of the highlights and activities from last year’s Global Exhibition Day ( [...]

I recently asked the following question on LinkedIn: Hi exhibition industry friends. Out of curiosity, what other attendee promotion/recruitment tools are you doing besides print, death by email and digital-based outreach? The reason I asked the question was two-fold: It seems many show organizers are over-dependent on emails to get the job done for recruiting quality visitors; and wanted to know what else industry colleagues are doing. A number of people answered, and there were over 1600 views [...]

'A view of Sao Paolo including exhibition venue Expo Center Norte' Provided you haven’t been running the country in the past 10 years, things are looking increasingly positive for the people of Brazil. On Tuesday, the president of the Central Bank of Brazil Ilan Goldfajn, said the country’s economy could expand beyond the otherwise “well-calibrated” 2.6 per cent forecasted for 2018. Speaking at an event in São Paulo, Goldfajn said that the nation’s recovery from the deepest recession in decade [...]

A huge deal has taken shape in the exhibition industry as Informa has concluded talks to acquire UBM. According to a Reuters report, both companies have agreed a deal on Wednesday which would see Informa acquiring UBM for 5.2 billion US Dollar in cash and stock. Informa now has until February 13 to make a firm offer. If the deal goes through, it will be by far the largest M&A activity ever seen in the exhibition industry. Informa's Chief Executive Stephen A. Carter will be chief executive of [...]

For anyone who missed UFI's World Map of Exhibition Venues last month, the total amount of exhibition space available around the world grew 7.7% over the last six years, giving organisers more choice in all markets except Central and South America, where venue closure has led to contraction. But while this overall growth does not explicitly refer only to bricks on the ground where none previously existed, it seems to me that we must not fixate only on new venue development. While there are 14 mo [...]